Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Monday, June 25, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday limited the use of life
terms in prison for murderers under 18, ruling that judges must consider
the defendant’s youth and the nature of the crime before putting him
behind bars with no hope for parole.
In a 5-4 decision, the high
court struck down as cruel and unusual punishment the laws in about 28
states that mandated a life term for murderers, including those under
age 18.
The justices ruled in the cases of two 14-year-olds who
were given life terms for their role in a homicide, but their decision
goes further. It applies to all those under 18. It does not
automatically free any prisoner, and it does not forbid life terms for young murderers.
Nonetheless, it is an important victory for those who have objected to imposing very long prison terms on very young offenders.
Justice Elena Kagan
referred to state laws that “mandated each juvenile (convicted of
murder) die in prison even if the judge or jury would have thought that
his youth and…the nature of his crime made a lesser sentence (for
example, life with the possibility of parole) more appropriate.”
“We therefore hold that mandatory life without parole for those under age of 18 at the time of their crime violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments,” she said. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor agreed.
The
court’s opinion does not say whether its ruling applies only to future
sentences, or whether it could give a new hearing to the more than 2,000
prisoners who are serving life terms for earlier murders.
Chief
Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented. “Put simply, if a 17-year old is
convicted of deliberately murdering an innocent victim, it is not
unusual for the murderer to receive a mandatory sentence of life without
parole.” Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined in dissent.
The
majority, however, argues that states had not necessarily intended to
impose life terms on juvenile offenders. Instead, they passed laws that
allowed juveniles to be sentenced as adults for serious crimes. And they
also passed laws that set life in prison without parole as the required
punishment for murder.
In one case that came before the court,
Kuntrell Jackson was 14 when he and two other teenagers went to a video
store in Arkansas planning to rob it. He stayed outside, and one of the
youths pulled a gun and killed the store clerk. Jackson was charged as
an adult and given a life term with no parole.
In the second case,
Evan Miller, a 14-year-old from Alabama, was convicted of murder after
he and another boy set fire to a trailer where they had bought drugs
from a neighbor. He too was give a life term with no parole.
Today’s
decision in Miller vs. Alabama is the third in a decade that puts new
constitutional limits on crimes involving juveniles.
In 2005, the
court abolished the death sentence for those under 18 who are convicted
of murder. In 2010, the justices went further and said life terms with
no parole are unconstitutional for juveniles who commit crimes short of
murder.
Today’s decision does not end life terms for young
murderers, but it says judges or juries must consider the defendant’s
youth before imposing a life term with no parole.
Bryan Stevenson, the Alabama attorney
who argued the case, called the ruling “an important win for children.
The court took a significant step forward by recognizing the fundamental
unfairness of mandatory death-in-prison sentences that do not allow
sentencers to consider the unique status of children.”

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Democrats in New Jersey’s Legislature called for stricter oversight of
the state’s troubled system of halfway houses on Thursday, saying new
disclosure requirements would lead to “better safety for our communities
and the halfway house residents.”

The plan came in response to articles published this week in The New
York Times that examined the privately run system, which has beds for
roughly 3,500 state inmates and parolees. The articles detailed
unchecked violence, gang activity, drug use and hundreds of escapes from the facilities every year.

Democratic lawmakers called for the Corrections Department to issue
quarterly reports describing conditions inside the halfway houses,
including the number of inmates, the number of escapes, incidences of
violence and disciplinary measures taken.

In addition, every halfway-house operator that contracts with the
Corrections Department would have to undergo a financial audit, said
Senator Paul A. Sarlo, chairman of the Budget and Appropriations
Committee.

The language was included in the latest version of the Democratic budget
proposal. A final vote on the budget is expected Monday.

Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has close ties to the company that dominates the network of halfway houses, Community Education Centers,
as do some prominent Democrats. Mr. Christie’s close friend and
political adviser William J. Palatucci is a senior executive of the
company, and Mr. Christie has often visited and praised its facilities.

“Clearly, there’s reason to be concerned about the lack of transparency
from the administration,” said Assemblyman Charles Mainor, a Democrat
who is chairman of the Law and Public Safety Committee. “We’re taking a
vital step toward improved disclosure and, hopefully, better safety for
our communities and the halfway-house residents and employees.”

Since the 1990s, New Jersey has sent some state prison inmates finishing
sentences to privately run halfway houses, many of which have hundreds
of beds. State and county agencies now spend roughly $105 million a year
on such placements. Community Education received about $71 million of
that in the last fiscal year, according to company records.

NY Times
After serving more than a year behind bars in New Jersey for assaulting a
former girlfriend, David Goodell was transferred in 2010 to a sprawling
halfway house in Newark. One night, Mr. Goodell escaped, but no one in
authority paid much notice. He headed straight for the suburbs, for
another young woman who had spurned him, and he killed her, the police
said.

The state sent Rafael Miranda, incarcerated on drug and weapons charges,
to a similar halfway house, and he also escaped. He was finally
arrested in 2010 after four months at large, when, prosecutors said, he
shot a man dead on a Newark sidewalk — just three miles from his halfway
house.

Valeria Parziale had 15 aliases and a history of drugs and burglary.
Nine days after she slipped out of a halfway house in Trenton in 2009,
Ms. Parziale, using a folding knife, nearly severed a man’s ear in a
liquor store. She was arrested and charged with assault but not escape.
Prosecutors say they had no idea she was a fugitive.

After decades of tough criminal justice policies, states have been
grappling with crowded prisons that are straining budgets. In response
to those pressures, New Jersey has become a leader in a national
movement to save money by diverting inmates to a new kind of privately
run halfway house.

At the heart of the system is a company with deep connections to politicians of both parties, most notably Gov. Chris Christie.

Many of these halfway houses are as big as prisons, with several hundred
beds, and bear little resemblance to the neighborhood halfway houses of
the past, where small groups of low-level offenders were sent to
straighten up.

New Jersey officials have called these large facilities an innovative
example of privatization and have promoted the approach all the way to
the Obama White House.

Yet with little oversight, the state’s halfway houses have mutated into a
shadow corrections network, where drugs, gang activity and violence,
including sexual assaults, often go unchecked, according to a 10-month
investigation by The New York Times.

Perhaps the most unsettling sign of the chaos within is inmates’ ease in getting out.

Since 2005, roughly 5,100 inmates have escaped from the state’s
privately run halfway houses, including at least 1,300 in the 29 months
since Governor Christie took office, according to an analysis by The
Times.

Some inmates left through the back, side or emergency doors of halfway
houses, or through smoking areas, state records show. Others placed
dummies in their beds as decoys, or fled while being returned to prison
for violating halfway houses’ rules. Many had permission to go on
work-release programs but then did not return.

While these halfway houses often resemble traditional correctional
institutions, they have much less security. There are no correction
officers, and workers are not allowed to restrain inmates who try to
leave or to locate those who do not come back from work release, the
most common form of escape. The halfway houses’ only recourse is to
alert the authorities.

The New York Times
NEWARK — Derek West Harris wore tailored pants, soft sweaters and shiny
shoes. People called him D-Nice. His easygoing manner drew customers to
his barber’s chair at Million Dollar Kutz in Newark, a shop where he was
known as much for his conversation as for his trims. He chatted about
religion, relationships and cars, which he loved.

It was a car that landed Mr. Harris in New Jersey’s troubled system of
halfway houses. In May 2009, the police pulled him over in a Mazda
Millenia he had recently bought and found that he had not yet registered
or insured it. He also had about $700 in unpaid traffic tickets.

After his arrest, Mr. Harris was not held at the local jail. Instead, he was sent to Delaney Hall,
a 1,200-bed halfway house here that was set up to rehabilitate inmates
sentenced for minor offenses. But Mr. Harris, 51, was thrown in with
violent criminals.

Two days later, three of those inmates robbed Mr. Harris of the contents of his pockets — $3 — and killed him.

The inmates were prosecuted, but officials cleared Delaney Hall of responsibility.

Officials of Essex County, which includes Newark, maintain that they use
Delaney Hall, rather than the far more secure county jail, solely for
low-level offenders like Mr. Harris who need rehabilitation and
treatment.

Yet internal county documents obtained by The New York Times show that
the county has been placing inmates at Delaney Hall who have a history
of violence and have been charged with violent crimes.

There is a financial incentive for this policy: to generate revenue for the county.

By placing inmates at Delaney Hall, the county frees beds at its jail.
It then earns a significant profit by renting those beds to the federal
government to house federal inmates and immigration detainees. About 40 percent of the county jail’s roughly 2,400 beds are now reserved for federal use.

The Times’s findings on the Harris killing, part of a 10-month
examination of the halfway-house system in New Jersey, underscore how
financial concerns are playing a pivotal role in prison privatization in
the state, which is a national leader in this movement.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

DENVER, Jun 18, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
A class-action lawsuit was filed today alleging that the U.S. Bureau of
Prisons is mistreating mentally ill prisoners at the Supermax U.S.
penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. Eleven prisoners filed the case on
behalf of all mentally ill prisoners at the facility. The defendants are
the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and several of its top officials
with responsibility for the operation of the prison. According to papers
filed in the U.S. District Court for Colorado, extended confinement in
isolation is likely to exacerbate all types of mental illness,
increasing the risk of violence against prison staff and other inmates,
and reducing the likelihood that these prisoners will ever be able
successfully to re-enter society at the end of their sentences.

The lawsuit, styled Bacote, et al v. Federal
Bureau of Prisons, seeks to compel BOP to comply with its own
existing policies and rules regarding the placement and treatment of
mentally ill prisoners. The lawsuit also seeks to define a minimum level
of care and medical treatment for those in custody that is sufficient to
satisfy the prohibitions of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment.

The penitentiary in Florence, referred to as ADX, was built to house the
most dangerous prisoners in the system and is considered to be the most
secure prison in the country. Staff there refer to ADX as the "Alcatraz
of the Rockies." Prisoners spend up to 24 hours per day in single cells,
and their communications and contact with other inmates and staff are
severely restricted.

The complaint alleges that despite the BOP's own written policies
excluding the mentally ill from ADX because of its severe conditions,
the BOP frequently assigns prisoners with mental illness there because
of a deficient evaluation and screening process. Then, according to the
complaint, mentally ill prisoners housed at ADX are denied
constitutionally adequate treatment and services.

The consequences of BOP's deliberate indifference to the proper
diagnosis and treatment of prisoners with serious mental illness are
shocking. According to the complaint, "Some prisoners mutilate their own
bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing
utensils and whatever other objects they can obtain. Others swallow
razor blades, nail clippers, broken glass and other dangerous objects.
Many engage in fits of screaming and ranting for hours on end. Others
carry on delusional conversations with the voices they hear in their
heads, oblivious to reality and the danger that such behavior might pose
to themselves and to anyone who interacts with them. Still others spread
feces and other waste throughout their cells, throw it at the
correctional staff and otherwise create health hazards at ADX. Suicide
attempts are common; many have been successful." In fact, a wrongful
death lawsuit was filed last month in federal court in Colorado. That
lawsuit, styled Vega v. Davis, charges that
a prisoner at ADX suffering from mental illness committed suicide while
he was there because he was not properly treated.

Ed Aro, a partner in the Denver office of Arnold & Porter and the lead
attorney in the case, calls ADX "a national disgrace." He adds, "No one
disputes that certain prisoners require a closely controlled prison
environment. But for people with mental illness, confinement with little
or no mental health care in the isolated and brutal conditions at ADX is
torment. It's wrong and it's unconstitutional."

The Complaint alleges that because of their untreated or poorly treated
mental illness, many prisoners at ADX act out, resulting in disruption,
compromised security and a risk of harm to themselves, ADX staff and
other prisoners. And, as Aro points out, "Not everyone at ADX will die
in prison. A quarter of our mentally ill clients there will be released
into the community in the next five years, and almost 60% will be
released in the next 20 years. Unless the BOP reforms the mental health
system at ADX, it will be very, very difficult for mentally ill
prisoners held there to return to society safely and successfully."

The DC Prisoners' Project of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights and Urban Affairs is co-counsel with Arnold & Porter. Its
director, Philip Fornaci, said, "Americans would not allow sick or
wounded animals to be treated as these prisoners are treated. They
should not sanction the inhumane treatment of U.S. citizens, whatever
crimes they committed in the past. We will not stop until this situation
has changed."

Arnold & Porter LLP, with offices in nine cities, including Denver,
Colorado, has a long-standing commitment to important pro bono
matters, including those involving the rights of prisoners.

The DC Prisoners' Project of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights and Urban Affairs (
http://www.washlaw.org/projects/dc-prisoners-rights )
advocates for the humane treatment and dignity of the nearly 8,000 DC
prisoners currently held in dozens of BOP facilities across the country.
In collaboration with private law firms and individual pro bono
attorneys, the Project has achieved significant changes in access to
health care for DC prisoners in jails and prisons across the country,
including insuring access to constitutionally-adequate levels of medical
and mental health care in both local jails and distant BOP facilities.

Additional information about the Bacote and Vega lawsuits is
available at
www.supermaxlawsuit.com .

She was assigned to the cleaning crew, under the supervision of a
janitor. One night in 2009, he ordered her into the closet.

“He took his pants off and grabbed my hair and pushed me down,” Ms.
Falcone, now 32, said in an interview. “That started a few weeks of
basically hell.”

Finally, she told a senior guard that she was being sexually assaulted,
according to internal reports written by the guard.

She was immediately transferred to another halfway house. The janitor was dismissed. And that is where it ended.

State officials and prosecutors did not conduct an inquiry into the allegations or the halfway house, which is run by Community Education Centers, a company with close ties to New Jersey politicians, including Chris Christie, who became governor in 2010.

“They shipped me off to another place
like it never happened,” said Ms. Falcone, who had gone to prison for
forging prescriptions.

Located next to a highway in an industrial stretch of Trenton, the Bo
Robinson center is supposed to represent the new thinking in
corrections. To save money, the state releases inmates early from
prisons and turns them over to privately operated halfway houses.

These facilities are not the street-corner halfway houses of the past.
They have hundreds of beds and are promoted as therapeutic communities
with a focus on preparing inmates for society.

Yet Bo Robinson, behind its walls, often seems to embody the worst in
the prisons it was intended to supplant. Imagine a sizable penitentiary,
filled with inmates, some with violent records, but lacking the
supervision that prevents such places from falling into bedlam.

The New York Times, during a 10-month investigation of New Jersey’s
system of state-regulated halfway houses, put together a portrait of
life in Bo Robinson from dozens of interviews with inmates and workers
and a review of hundreds of pages of internal reports, court filings and
state records.

Inmates are housed in barracks-style rooms, not cells. At night, one or
two low-wage workers typically oversee each unit of 170 inmates.
Outnumbered and fearful, these workers sometimes refuse to patrol the
corridors.

Robbery, sexual assault, menacing of the weak — in the darkness, the inmates’ rooms turn into a free-for-all.

Inmates regularly ask to be returned to prison, where they feel safer, workers said.

Government agencies pay millions of dollars annually to Bo Robinson for
drug counseling, yet drugs have been so rampant inside that when one
group of inmates was tested, 73 percent came up positive, Mercer County
records show.

The government requires that Bo Robinson provide therapy, job training
and other services, but current and former workers said they had neither
the skills nor the time to do so.

They said that as a result, they falsified inmate records. The workers
said that when they did deliver these services, they had to do so
haphazardly, knowing they were accomplishing little, if anything.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Westword
Contrary to scenes in numerous books and movies, getting locked up
doesn't always lead to painful bouts of reflection and self-examination.
Criminals are a stubborn bunch, and it's easy behind bars to embrace a
convict code and a victim mentality that merely reinforces addictive,
self-destructive and antisocial behavior -- which is why so many
convicted felons end up back in prison within a few years of release.
It's a mind game that Hassan A. Latif knows too well.
"I spent a lot of time and energy refusing to deal with what put me
there," says Latif, who went into the Colorado Department of Corrections
at the age of 33 and emerged shortly after turning fifty. "For fifteen
years, I wasn't about hearing any of it. I wasn't looking in the mirror
at my part in this."
Latif came to Colorado from New York in the 1980s with an attitude
and an addiction to cocaine -- his "drug of no choice," as he puts it.
In 1988, he was convicted of armed robbery in Arapahoe County. He
emerged from prison early in 2006 determined to pursue a different path.
He now works as an addiction counselor, serves as executive director of
the newly launched Second Chance Center -- and has just published Never Going Back: 7 Steps to Staying Out of Prison, a survival guide for parolees coming out of the corrections system and families trying to keep them out.
The turning point in his own incarceration, Latif says, came when he
decided to seek out a "therapeutic community" at DOC for prisoners with a
history of substance abuse, followed by a residential program operated
by Peer I and University of Colorado Denver upon release. The in-prison
program had few slots available and was disparaged by other prisoners,
but Latif refused to be discouraged.

Hassan Latif.

"Most
guys never had the opportunity to access it," he recalls. "They called
it a 'rat program' because it's peer-driven, one participant addressing
another about their behaviors. But the people saying that were the ones
who failed the program."
Latif's book distills many of the hard lessons acquired from his own
experience of moving from semi-institutionalized badass to tenuous
freedom. His seven steps begin with "Own Your Own Crap" -- dispensing
with the usual broken-record whining and excuses and accepting
responsibility for past crimes -- and move on to confronting addiction
and coping with the basics of job-hunting and "ego management" on the
outside. The message isn't dissimilar to what many prisoners may be
hearing from parole officers and case managers, but it's delivered in a
been-there-done-that tone of bittersweet, firsthand understanding and
empathy.
At the same time, the narrative shares few specifics of Latif's own
troubled history -- largely because he didn't want to glorify his crimes
or prison life, he says.
"I was getting a lot of pushback from publishers to include war stories, to include more HBO's Oz
kind of stuff," he explains. "But I didn't want it to be my story. I
didn't want it to seem like you had to go through my particular
experiences to be successful."
What makes a hardened criminal abruptly decide to change his or her
life? Latif says that varies with each individual. "Some people go in,
and after six months in prison they're ready for something new," he
says. "For others, it can take years and years. My hope was that loved
ones would be purchasing this for themselves as well as for the people
who are coming out."
More information about Latif's book -- and some early, enthusiastic responses -- can be found at the Never Going Back Facebook page. Latif will be signing copies of Never Going Back at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, 2401 Welton Street, on Monday, June 18, at 4:30 pm.
Other articles about parole and recidivism issues are collected in Westword's Crime and Punishment archive. More from our Prison Life archive: "Krystal Voss's advice for female prisoners: Obsessively hoard water."

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

CCJRC Will have a booth at the Pridefest Celebration in Civic Center Park

Our
booth is located on the South side of 14th Ave in front of the library
and art museum on the just south of the Greek Theater.

Please come by to say hello!! Learn more about current legislation!!

Saturday, June 16 from 11 a.m - 7 p.m

Sunday, June 17th from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Fight for your right to PRIDE!

Denver PrideFest 2012 will be held June 16th and 17th at Civic Center Park, headlined
on Saturday by Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli and dance sensation Kristine
W on Sunday. Our parade Grand Marshals this year are the four out
elected officials of the Colorado State Legislature, Senators Pat
Steadman and Lucia Guzman, and Representatives Mark Ferrandino and Sue
Schafer.

Festival Hours:Saturday, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, 10am - 6pm

Parade:The CoorsLight PrideFest parade steps off from Cheesman park at 9.30am and proceeds down Colfax into Civic Center Park.Click here to check out our 2012 flipbook!Click on links to the left to check out our stages and entertainment:- The Center Stage with headliners Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli and Kristine W.
- Orgullo Latino with headliner Rigo Gutierrez as Pitbull
- Smirnoff Dance World, with headlning DJs Micro and Irene
- OutWest Country stage with professional exhibitions and open dance all weekend

Produced by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of Colorado (The Center), Denver PrideFest is now the third largest pride festival, and seventh largest pride parade in the United States.

Denver PrideFest takes place annually in June in downtown Civic
Center Park. PrideFest features the CoorsLight PrideFest Parade, a Dance
Stage with DJs, a Country Stage with line-dancing lessons, a Latin
Stage with cultural programming, and the Main Stage with live
entertainment, and plenty of celebrating both days.
The festival also features more than 250 vendor booths with
arts, crafts, food and more. We provide a VIP area with food and drinks
for sponsors and contributors to enjoy, and there's also a family area,
youth alley, and a transgender resource area.

PrideFest also provides a $25 million dollar economic impact to the
City of Denver annually, as reported in a 2009 survey conducted by
Birchill Enterprises.The mission of Denver PrideFest is to create a fun, safe and
empowering space to celebrate and promote the heritage and culture of
the LGBT and allied community in Colorado.

Monday, June 11, 2012

61% in Colorado Favor Legalizing, Regulating Marijuana - Rasmussen Reports™
Coloradoans will be voting whether to legalize marijuana this November, a ballot initiative that some say could impact the presidential race there. Most Colorado voters are in favor of legalizing the drug under certain conditions.
Sixty-one percent (61%) of Likely Voters in Colorado favor legalizing marijuana if it is regulated the way alcohol and cigarettes are. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the Centennial State shows that 27% of voters oppose legalization even with government regulation, while 12% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Colorado was conducted on June 6, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Saturday, June 09, 2012

DREAMers in Denver protest deportations, private prisons for immigrants » peoplesworld
DENVER - Undocumented youths from CAD, the Campaign for the American Dream, arrived here just a few days ago, and are already changing things.
Almost three months previously these DREAM Walkers began their 3,000 mile journey across the United States, from the Golden Gate Bridge in California on their way to the White House, to demand the Obama administration stop massive deportations and issue an executive order to bar deportations of DREAM Act-eligible youth.
The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors or DREAM Act, sponsored by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, would provide a path to legalization and citizenship for young people, brought here as children without any legal documents, if they have "demonstrated good moral character" and are either working toward completing a college degree or are serving in the armed forces.
Immediately after setting foot in Colorado in the last few days of May, these six courageous young people kept on walking-in the 3,000-person march on Wells Fargo bank's Colorado headquarters, led by the Service Employees International Union during its quadrennial international convention here.
They joined the many other undocumented marchers in the union's action to bring public attention to Wells Fargo's involvement in payday lending, fraudulent foreclosure, and ridiculously low tax payments, as well as the bank's private-prison profits from the incarceration of undocumented people.
On June 4, the DREAM team joined over 100 Coloradans in the spirited monthly march and rally against Immigration and Customs Enforcement's immigrant detention center in Aurora, just east of Denver.
Though technically under the control of ICE, a part of Homeland Security, the notorious facility is actually run by the GEO Group, an international private-prison corporation. Friends and family members of undocumented people trapped inside recount the reports of humiliation, extortion, physical and sexual abuse within the prison walls at the protest each month.
The next day, the DREAM Walkers visited the Obama for America Denver campaign office-and stayed. Two of the group entered the office and soon began a sit-in and hunger strike. They repeated their call to President Barack Obama to put portions of the American DREAM Act into force by executive order.
Noting that the current administration has deported over one million people, more than any previous administration, they called on Obama to end massive deportations at once and to take action on the DREAM Act without further delay.
The two carrying out the current hunger strike are Veronica Gómez, 24, of California, and Javier Hernández, 23, of Denver. Gómez was brought to the U.S. when she was a little girl of three, Hernández when he was a six-month-old baby. Neither has ever visited Mexico since.
"With deportations on the rise and "Secure Communities" recently imposed throughout the state of Colorado, we cannot just sit back and wait!" said Gómez.
In the final week of May, "Secure Communities" was suddenly imposed on all 64 Colorado counties, and local law enforcement officials are now obligated to assist ICE in rounding up and detaining undocumented people.
Some of the six walkers are fighting their own deportation. At the next day's rally and press conference in front of the now-closed OFA office where Gómez and Hernández were still sitting in, others in the CAD team officially "came out" as undocumented.
Spontaneously, many Coloradans in the crowd immediately followed suit. A number of young participants took advantage of the liberating spirit of the event: Many who had not previously acknowledged their status as undocumented-even to close friends and fellow students-announced their status, putting them at risk. Yet, chants like, "undocumented, unafraid, unashamed," arose as the rally gathered steam.
The two young people inside the building, at that time just 24 hours into their sit-in and hunger strike, smiled broadly and waved as they watched the enthusiasm of their colleagues and supporters just a few feet away outside the office's large windows.
Local progressive, labor, and faith-based groups in Colorado are voicing support for the hunger strikers and the other DREAM Walkers, and offering donations of supplies for the continuing march to Washington, D.C. Yet the campaign is being led by the Walkers and in Colorado assisted by local organizations of undocumented people.

Friday, June 08, 2012

New York Times
For petty offenders and violent criminals alike, the length of a prison
stay increased by more than a third over the past two decades, a period
of time in which the prison population doubled, according to a report by
the Pew Center on the States. Inmates released from prison in 2009
spent an average of 2.9 years — or 36 percent — longer behind bars than
offenders released in 1990, the report found. The additional time cost
taxpayers more than $10 billion. In Florida, the average time served
rose by 166 percent; in New York, 2 percent. Eight states showed
decreases in the length of prison terms, according to the report, which
analyzed data from the federal government’s National Corrections
Reporting Program. Adam Gelb, director of the center’s Public Safety
Performance Project, noted that the variation among states followed no
evident regional pattern, reinforcing the idea that “state policy
choices, often driven by particular crimes or circumstances in that
state, drive the size and cost of the prison population, rather than
data and research about what’s most effective in reducing crime.”

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Last
week, prisoners in two different facilities in the United States
resisted inhumane conditions — one through an uprising that the
mainstream media dubbed a “riot,” and the other through a hunger strike.
The tactics employed by the two groups differ, but the messages are
clearly linked: Prisoners are protesting their conditions and are
willing to put their lives on the line to fight for better treatment.
On May 20, inmates took control of the Adams County Correctional
Facility in Mississippi for over eight hours. One inmate managed to
access a cell phone during the uprising and called WLBT TV in Jackson,
proving his presence in the prison by sending pictures. He gave the
station the following statement: “They beat us; we’re just [paying] them
back. We just need better treatment and services. We need medical
attention. We just want some respect. They call us wetbacks” — referring
to a racist slur used against undocumented immigrants.
The prison is privately owned by Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA), which manages over 60 facilities and touts a capacity of 90,000
beds. The prison in Adams County is populated by immigrants from over 70
countries awaiting deportation and is part of a larger war on
undocumented immigrants in the United States. 2011 was a record year for
deportations: 396,000 people
were removed from the country, and more than half of those people were
convicted of crimes and held at private immigration detention facilities
like the one in Adams County.
During the uprising, one guard was killed, and several guards and
inmates were injured. Over two dozen guards were reportedly held
hostage. The prisoners were subdued by SWAT teams, which dropped pepper
spray grenades and tear gas bombs into the facility. Before it was
quashed, more than 600 of about 2,500 total inmates were reportedly
involved in the takeover.
The mainstream media, much like the prison officials themselves, have
sought to silence the grievances that motivated the uprising. Nearly
every headline has emphasized images of violence, tumult, disorder. Many
news outlets claimed that a gang fight
started the revolt, yet they fail to explain how a clash between rival
gangs could result in an apparently unified uprising with clear demands.
The nature of the uprising and the death of a prison guard in the
midst of it have given the media a pretext to ignore the massive
violence and brutality that prisoners suffer across the country every
single day. The incident is also symptomatic of the fact that the
privatization of prisons like the one in Adams County means a lack of
oversight and responsibility, which results in inhumane conditions for
inmates. The Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance has
received numerous complaints about the conditions of this CCA
facilitity and many others, with reports of beatings, overcrowding,
substandard food and lack of proper medical care, among other
grievances. These are precisely the kinds of problems that were cited by
those who took matters into their own hands in Mississippi by mounting
an occupation.
Meanwhile, 45 prisoners at Red Onion State Prison in Wise County,
Virginia were plotting another kind of resistance: a hunger strike,
which they launched on May 22. With the help of a network of
prisoner-support activists in the area, the hunger strikers released 10
demands and a press advisory. Among these demands were such basics as
fully-cooked food and access to fresh fruit and vegetables, access to
complaint and grievance forms, an end to torture in the form of
indefinite segregation, and adequate medical care. Five hundred of the
1,700 inmates at Red Onion — Virginia’s only “supermax” prison — spend 23 hours a day in isolation. Inmates at Red Onion have also reported being beaten by guards and bitten by dogs.
Prisoner hunger strikes like this have been growing in frequency.
Just in the past year, hunger strikes have happened at the Ohio State
Penitentiary, the Corcoran State Prison, Pelican Bay State Prison,
Ironwood State Prison, Kern Valley State Prison and more. Prisoners
around the world are also choosing to resist by hunger striking, most
notably the 2,500-strong Palestinian prisoner hunger strike that went on
for weeks and was ultimately hailed as a victory. As we write, there are prisoners fasting in resistance in Dubai, Morocco, Egypt and, earlier this week, a 110-day hunger strike ended in Bahrain.
On Tuesday, a flurry of articles, including one in The Washington Post,
ran with headlines claiming that the hunger strike at Red Onion prison
had ended. In order for the state to officially recognize a hunger
strike, inmates must reject their meals for nine consecutive days, which
Virginia Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke said they had
not. In response to the news, activists with the group Solidarity with
Virginia Prison Hunger Strikers issued a response challenging the validity of the DOC’s statements:

Monday, June 04, 2012

The Denver Post
On paper, murderer and white supremacist
Daniel Scott Dias appears to be the type of prisoner Colorado
officials should lock up in a maximum- security prison cell and throw
away the key.
And for years, that basically was how the Colorado Department of Corrections dealt with many violent felony offenders.
But
in the past year, Dias and hundreds of other prisoners have been
transferred to lower-security lockups as part of a new systemwide
strategy that is less costly and gives inmates more educational
opportunities.
The strategy is partly based on some sobering statistics.
"Ninety-seven percent of those who are locked up will get released," DOC executive director Tom Clements said.
Of those prisoners in administrative segregation, 47 percent are released directly to the community, he said.
The
mass transfer of inmates from segregated single cells to
general-population cell blocks is one of the main reasons Colorado will
close Centennial Correctional Facility in Cañon City — its second
maximum-security prison to shutter — by 2013 and before a newly built
prison will be completely filled.
Colorado closed its first prison, Fort Lyon Correctional Facility, on March 1.
Prison
populations are declining in Colorado and nationwide after decades of
steady growth. For the first time since 1977, the total U.S. prison
population slightly decreased in 2010.
Between 2005 and 2010, the
U.S. crime rate dropped by 12 percent. In Colorado, the crime rate
dropped by 32 percent over the same period, Clements said. Violent
crimes are going down, he said.
"I think it's a very good thing," Clements said. "When the crime rate drops, people can feel a little safer."
When
it became apparent Colorado needed to close another prison because of
the state's rapidly decreasing prison population, DOC officials targeted
the most modern.
Centennial
cost $184 million to build and is the most costly to run because
inmates are kept in single cells and more staff are needed to guard
them, Clements said.
At the time Centennial was built, "it made all the sense in the world," he said.
The
number of high-risk inmates was on the rise, many with mental
illnesses. Others started riots, ran gangs or killed each other,
Clements said. The administrative-segregation numbers swelled, as total
prison numbers grew every year.
But last year, a study by national
prison experts found that Colorado was keeping prisoners in segregation
much longer than necessary.
DOC officials — including Clements —
set up a system in which officials regularly review the behavior of
inmates in administrative segregation.
Dias, who fatally stabbed
his girlfriend Rebecca Ochs, 24, in Aurora in 1995, and was also accused
of a white-supremacy murder plot, lived alone in a tiny cell at
Centennial for two years.
Dias, 42, now lives in a cellblock at
Sterling Correctional Facility where he often encourages black and
Jewish cellmates to attend religious-worship meetings with him. He is a
model prisoner.
Dias is serving a 45-year sentence on a conviction for second-degree murder. He said he decided on his own to change his life.
"I turned my life over to the Lord," he said. "I try to abide by every rule."

Friday, June 01, 2012

The Denver Post
Former Colorado legislator Douglas Bruce
on Thursday groused about the food, the deplorable living conditions and
the ridiculous rules — just as the average convict often does.
Bruce
was sentenced to 180 days in the clink for using his charity to avoid
income taxes — but was released early for good behavior.
On Thursday, he emerged from the Denver city jail slim and scrappy, saying his spirit had not been broken behind bars.
"I'm stronger than when I went in because I rose above the insanity of the whole process," he said.
He vowed to sue the lockup after he wins his appeal of his tax-evasion conviction.
Bruce's list of complaints is long.
"They served refrigerated rolls at least twice
View more images of Doug Bruce getting out of jail.

a day. I've never seen that," Bruce said outside the Van
Cise-Simonet Detention Center, explaining that he lost 47 pounds during
104 days in jail. "They served what they called gravy, which I
considered to look and taste like sewage. They didn't serve coffee. All
they served was chicory, which is a boiled root."He was placed
in solitary confinement for the first four days of his sentence. He
said jail staff later admitted that was unnecessary and placed him in a
low-security housing block. When a man threatened to cut his throat with
a knife, he was again placed in solitary confinement for three days. It
didn't make sense that he was punished, he said.
But jail spokesman Capt. Frank Gale
said Bruce was initially placed in an administrative segregation cell
at his own request, and for his own safety he was returned to
segregation after his life was threatened.
Bruce said that inmates were overcharged for use of phones and that the commissary food was five times market prices.
The
jail food was inedible, he said, adding that he survived on low-fat
milk and oranges. Not even the guards ate the food, he said.